Walk Into My Woods

Beyond the manicured back yard is a mostly untamed area still on our property. There's a large 3-season pond that attracts a pair of ducks each spring, a stand of 50-foot evergreens, and a sunny spot where the blackberries grow. This natural area is my husband's "man space." He comes out here to chop wood, cut back canes, dig a bit, visit the mountain beaver in his den, and just chill. When we get our honeybees, this is where the hive will go. As you might guess, this area attracts a lot of non-human visitors. 

This afternoon, I knew I needed more fresh berries for tomorrow's breakfast, so I took a quart container and headed out to our woods. We eat fresh blackberries with both breakfast and dinner this time of year. In addition to picking the morning's breakfast berries, I also picked another 3 quarts to freeze on a large tray to add to our humongous zip bags in the freezer.

Walk with me.

When you first leave the manicured area of the property, trees shade the walkway and provide good cover from the sun's heat. One daughter has used a couple of trees out here to suspend a hammock for summertime evening lounging. 

In a moment, the walk opens to the blackberry patch, a sunny spot nestled between our yard proper and the woods.

If I walk just a little further and to one side, there's a large pond. It's almost all dried up now but will fill again beginning in September. 

Beyond the blackberry patch and the pond is the woods. Part of the woods is on our property and part is on other neighbors'. There's another house back behind here, but the large trees block our view of those neighbors, and likewise, their view of us.

My husband has cut paths into the wild blackberry patch, so we can get to most of the berries. If I don't find a lot of ripe berries down one path, I simply walk down another. 

My daughters have been picking wild berries in a couple of public spots around our community, as those always ripen earlier in summer than our property's berries. With the berries on our property, we run the risk that rains will return before the berries have ripened, and the berries will be lost. So we pick around the community early in the season to guarantee a good supply for winter. The other draw to foraging around the community is we can find more ripe berries in one shot at the public spots (due to the expansive areas of some of those public sites), compared to our own patch.

Our own berries are now ripening and the public places have been mostly picked over. The ones at the local school will be cut back later this week in preparation for children returning to the playfield and playground nearby. And the other patches are not looking as good now -- too much sun, too much heat, too many pickers. Because our woods is private property, there's no chance of our berries becoming picked over before we can get to them, so we leave the ripening berries on the canes until they are big and juicy. 

Last weekend I made 1.5 quarts of blackberry jam with our berries. I'll enlist the family to pick for me on Saturday and make another 1.5 quarts plus some pancake syrup over the weekend. Our two large zip bags should be full in the next day. I'll begin on the 3rd bag this week and hope to fill it half full (that's about all of the freezer space I can give to berries.)

Blackberry season is short. Right now we are inundated with fresh berries. But in just the wink of an eye, the berry harvest will be a pleasant memory of warm summer days and sweet, juicy berries.

Update on Our Kitchen Water Reclamation

Earlier in the summer, I discussed how we planned on saving most of our kitchen waste water for watering the garden. We have 2 rain barrels that fill in spring from roof run-off. We use this water exclusively for watering food-producing plants. By mid-July, both rain barrels have been emptied, and in past years we've mostly used municipal water for the garden. (We've saved some water from the kitchen, but not a big effort before this year.)

This year I came up with a workable plan for using the kitchen waste water. I put a 5-gallon bucket just outside the kitchen door and started using a plastic dish pan for rinsing produce, to catch hand-washing water, and for rinsing basically clean kitchen tools (like measuring cups) that I plan on reusing shortly. My plan was to dump the plastic dishpan into the bucket on the deck, which I would later empty into the nearest rain barrel for watering at a later time. Early in the implementation of the plan, I did all of the above. As time progressed, I often found it just easier to water parts of the garden directly from the dish pan or large bucket. However, we still poured this water into the rain barrel when I didn't have a need to water any of the garden.

Anyway, I seem to have gotten the whole family on board with this plan to salvage waste water, and we've all done our share to wash hands or rinse vegetables over or in the dish pan. We've also used the not-as-clean water from washing a pot or pan or cooled bean-cooking water directly on a couple of fruit trees just outside the kitchen instead of using municipal water for shrubbery and trees. (We normally have to set a hose on our trees once or twice per summer as our summers here are quite dry.) In addition, I've urged everyone in the house to take much, much shorter showers. A couple of us have been taking navy showers. Your standard 10-minute shower can use as much as 60 gallons of water, whereas a navy shower done right can use as little as 3 gallons. (Unfamiliar with a navy shower? Basically, you get your body wet as soon as you turn the water on, then turn the water off while you soap up. Finally, you turn the water on just long enough to rinse the soap off. It's easier to do in the heat of summer when I don't mind a cold shower.) 

Even with saving as much water as we could, I did still need to use municipal water for the garden on many days.

So here's what I've been waiting for, some sort of confirmation that our efforts have been making a difference. I received the bi-monthly water bill that covered mid-June through mid-August on Monday. And . . . we did save water! Our usage was greater than the previous 2-month period (mid-April through mid-May), but that was to be expected as we never need to water the garden in that earlier time period. But, in comparing this same time period between this year and last year, we shaved about 20% off of our water usage this year. We still have another couple of weeks where our garden will need regular watering. But the days are getting shorter and slightly cooler, meaning the garden will need less watering as we move closer to September. We will continue with water-saving methods, with hopes of receiving a water bill for the next cycle that doesn't make me feel sick to my stomach.